Wednesday, March 25, 2015

Pedicabbie may work from sun to sun

... a backlash against the rickshaws—part bike, part cart—is growing in tandem with their numbers.

“An absolute menace,” says Steve McNamara.

Who is, no surprise;

... general secretary of the Licensed Taxi Drivers Association,
the big trade group for London’s black cabs. The LTDA’s principal
adversary is online ride-sharing company Uber, against which it staged a
huge protest last summer.

Rather than produce a competitive product.

But Mr. McNamara spares a few barbs
for the rickshaw’s more analog nuisance. “It’s a complete madness that
in 21st-century London you could have something that doesn’t belong even
in a Third-World country.”

Who, in a free society, should get to decide that, the big incumbent...or the people who need to get from point A to point B?

Or the downtrodden workers of the world, for that matter;

Tilda Jánosi arrived in London from Budapest three years ago with £10
in her pocket and no command of English. She took up rickshaw driving,
she said, to learn the language “while making money to survive.”

But
Ms. Jánosi’s figure is leaner than her wallet. At 100 pounds, she’s
half the size of some rickshaws. On one occasion, she had to ask her
three passengers to get out of the pedicab and push. “As it was a cheery
crowd of drunk bankers, they were more than happy,” she said.